I earned my Ph.D. from the Nuclear Chemistry program here at Texas A&M University, located in the Cyclotron Institute, where we have our own
K=500 Superconducting Cyclotron for use with experiments by program members as
well as outside users. I started the program in the Spring of 1990, coming in
with a 1987 B.S. in Organic Chemistry and some work experience at
O.I. Corporation
installing and repairing environmental chemistry equipment all
over the U.S., which needless to say didn't prepare me
well for the nuclear field. My graduate work consisted of the research described
a few paragraphs below and work on related projects, as well as teaching undergraduate chemistry labs -
everything from inorganic to physical to analytical to nuclear. Eventually, I
ended up graduating in the Fall of 1999.

While I was ABD for my PhD, I took a research associate position working for the
TAMUNuclear Engineering Department as a Research
Associate. My responsibilities included operation, tuning, and maintenance
of a National Electrostatics 2UDH Tandem Van de Graaff accelerator and its
Alphatross Ion Source. I developed beam control systems for accurate microbeam
delivery to cellular targets in vitro. I was also involved in a number of other projects and
duties, including operating our Norelco X-Ray machine for irradiating our
(usually biological) samples, operation and maintenance of our homegrown
100 kV electron accelerator, as well as desiging and updating some of the
computer control aspects of these machines. I also developed and maintained our LAN and
oversaw our electronics tech and a number of student workers. I also taught NUEN 201, "Modern Physics
for Nuclear Engineers", which covered probability and statistics, relativity,
atomic physics, and quantum mechanics, and a smattering of related material.

Until recently, I worked in the Material Research Program of the National Center for
Preservation Technology and Training
(NCPTT) as a Joint Faculty Researcher.
My duties were divided into half-time faculty for the Department of
Chemistry and Physics at
Northwestern State University and half time at NCPTT.
At NCPTT, I was primarily working on a comparative study evaluating the relative
performance of various stone consolidant treatments on calcareous stone used
in monuments and buildings. At NSU, I taught chemistry and physics lectures and
labs.

Currently, I am a Research Staff Member at the
Institute for Defense Analyses, a non-profit government-established
think-tank (FFRDC). I work
in the Operational Evaluation Division, supporting DOT&E oversight of DoD acquisition
programs.

My PhD research dealt with the dynamical properties of nuclear fission,
concentrating on the actual time scale of the fission process. While this
has been investigated quite a bit, the answers are still unclear. There are
primarily two ways one can estimate the time scale for fission, either
through investigating pre- and post-scission neutron multiplicities or by
examining the gamma ray spectrum of the fissioning system, concentrating on
the region where the E1 giant dipole resonance (GDR) de-excitation occurs.
Both of these methods have been investigated a number of times for a number
of different systems, and they both involve comparison with various
statistical model codes, such as GEMINI or CASCADE.

Until that research, these two methods have always been investigated separately, and
have always given fission times differing by as much as 1-2 orders of
magnitude between the two. My experiments involve gathering data sufficient
to accomplish both of these analyses within the same experiment. I
then analyze them using similar methods, thus getting the most comparable
numbers possible. The experiments were calibrated and the data
painstakingly analyzed to look for only appropriate events that
correspond to fission after compound nucleus formation. With 80 GB of
data on 4 systems (16O
+ 208Pb, 16O + 176Yb, 4He +
209Bi, 4He + 188Os) to sift
through, you can expect it to take some appreciable time. After that,
statistical model calculations were utilized to eventually give us our numbers
for the time scale of nuclear fission. The effects of different fission
mass asymmetries on the time scale was also investigated, as well as whether
or not any shape information on the compound system before fission can be
extracted from the GDR gamma ray spectral shape.

Here you see a view of the setup of my thesis experiment. The green cylinders
above are three of the eight
liquid scintillator DEMON neutron detectors. The box in the
foreground with the many hexagonal things is actually one of the banks
of 72 BaF2 gamma-ray detectors.
On the other side of the beam pipe, you can see the second bank of
BaF2 detectors. As you can see, both are at backwards angles with
respect to the beam, which comes in from the left of the picture.
In the background, you can make out
some of the many racks of electronics required to process all the data from the
more than 160 separate detectors. Not shown are the PPACs (parallel plate
avalanche counters) used inside the reaction chamber.